COI to be Scrapped and Not Replaced

In the UK, the government has confirmed it will scrap the 65-year-old Central Office of Information (COI), and in the meantime has cut its annual marketing and advertising budget by nearly 70% to £170m.

Since it was formed in 1946, the COI has worked in partnership with government departments and the wider public sector to drive best practice and cost effectiveness in the way citizens are informed, engaged and influenced about the issues that affect their lives.

Last year, the newly elected government froze all but essential COI advertising and marketing activity, and later in the year it cut the department's headcount by 40%.

In March, Matt Tee, the outgoing permanent secretary for government communication, called for the department to be axed and replaced with a Government Communications Centre (GCC), responsible for keeping a tighter rein on advertising and marketing spend.

However, today the government announced that it will not be replacing the COI with a new body, but will instead move responsibility for advertising and marketing activity to the Cabinet Office, which will take on 20 of COI's staff to bolster its existing communications team. The remaining c.130 COI staff with either be re-deployed elsewhere, or made redundant.

Cabinet Office minster Francis Maude (pictured) said that the changes to government communications had been designed to save money by cutting bureaucracy and reducing duplication.

'This does not mean the end of vital and cost effective marketing campaigns - such as those campaigns that save people's lives,' he stated. 'However, it does mean that communications spending in the future will never again get out of hand and instead will be more transparent, better co-ordinated and less bureaucratic.'

Paul Noon, General Secretary of public sector union Prospect has condemned the move, saying that the cuts to COI will leave most government communications in the hands of media agencies which are 'certain to be more expensive than in-house professionals'.

Web site: www.coi.gov.uk .